Research Projects

NANOBIO ASSEMBLY

Faculty Mentor: Prof: J. Fang

Research Description

Liquid crystals are sensitive materials. A slight external perturbation can change the orientation of liquid crystal molecules, which leads to an easily detectable change in the optical properties. We propose to exploit the capability of liquid crystals in imaging organic and biological interfaces. There are two specific projects in this proposed research. The first project involves the liquid crystal imaging of organized textures in the monolayers that are deposited on solid substrates from the air-water interface. Mosaic, star, stripe, and boojum textures, which are well characterized as a large-scale self-organization of the molecular tilt azimuth in the monolayers of acids, esters, and lipids, will be chosen as prototypes in our study. The effect of deposition methods and substrate properties on these organized textures will be investigated. The second project involves the liquid crystal imaging of biological processes on the surface of biological cells. Enzymatic reaction, ligand-receptor binding, and lipid rafts which occur on cell surfaces will be chosen as prototypes in our study. The f undamental issues to be investigated are how liquid crystals are oriented by biological cells, and how this orientation is altered by these biological processes that occur in the cell membranes.

The intellectual merit of this proposed research is in exploiting the new application of liquid crystals in the imaging and sensing techniques, which go beyond the well-known liquid crystal display technology. This proposed research effort will lead to a better understanding of the interaction mechanism of liquid crystals with organic and biological molecules, the fidelity of the monolayer transfer, and biological processes on cell surfaces. The success of this proposed research will meet a large number of requests or demands of simple, fast, and less expensive imaging techniques for studying the fidelity of the monolayer deposition, the self-organization of molecules on solid substrates, and the biological processes on cell surfaces.

The undergraduates will be involved in: